


Supernova

by JonathansNightFlight



Series: Thirty flavours of falling with you [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Inappropriate use of astronomy, M/M, Naked Cuddling, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Sappy, Sickfic, Someone Help Will Graham
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 05:37:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8389279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JonathansNightFlight/pseuds/JonathansNightFlight
Summary: Twelve hours after the Fall, Will wakes up to find the world, stubbornly, still turning. But is he as alone as he dreads?Naked Cuddles prompt, part of Thirty flavours of falling with you





	

Will’s eyes snapped open, opiate-hazy awareness eating away at the last tendrils of unconsciousness. Cold white light coming from? A blink, and then he made the source: an open door to his left. The light hurt, glaring on steel surfaces. The cutting scent of antiseptics, mingling with the sweet aftertaste of decay. And emptiness. A perfect lack of sound and motion. A thought: not a hospital - no hospital Will knew had ever known could be so still.

Another heartbeat, and then a gasp; pain hit Will like the granite surface of dark water. The veil of drugs was merely dulling the flaring signals of battered nerve endings, but there were so, so many firing at once. His muscles contracted and pulsated in agony. A spasm, and a moment of vertigo as his body started to slip from the gurney. Instinctively Will's hands clasped on the sides of the mattress, scrapping his fingers against steel. HIs shoulder flared in agony. Will's mouth spasmed around mute sounds - wanting to call out for someone but his mind coming blank.

And then Will stilled, the burning pain triggering a memory. The same burn of torn muscles as they were tightly wrapping around a body that was liquid fire, wind screeching against his ears as they were flying a thousand miles per hour; a two-headed super nova bursting through the speed of light. His burning arms, now empty.

As the memory faded, Will had to choke a scream because he wasn’t supposed to wake up in this poorly-medicated state of agony. Because when supernovae explode, nothing but a shockwave is meant to be left, a shockwave and fused remnants, astral molecules inseparable in death. And Will is left unfused, singular, molecules so loose he feels that if he'd relax his death grip on the mattress he would spill on the floor like dark water.

Long moments passed. Will knew the passage of time by nothing but the ebbs and crescendos of pain. The dead blood in his mouth tasting of miasma every time he swallows. Bitter defeat snatched from the hands of glory. His state of awareness dulled as the coils of grief tightened around his senses, all that he was retreating tighter and tighter within his mind, until all that was left was pain and raw grief.

A faint scraping sound, the squeal of a metalic wheel refusing to turn. The sharpness of the unexpected sound flicked a light-switch inside Will’s rapidly darkening mind. And a thought “Not alone”, but really, it was one word.

“Hannibal”.

He turned his head towards the open door, and for a second Will thought he saw a moving shadow. In a moment between fever-dream and full-blown panic, Will flung his body off the gurney and onto his feet. The feeling of sticky bandages tearing from bedsheets, barely healed flesh caught in their middle burned acid, and Will stumbled, nauseous and landed on his knees. He moved himself towards the light, hands pushing against the floor until his hand slipped on something tepid and gelatinous. Keeping the scream tight inside his ribs, and he forced himself to not look down. Crawling his way to the doorway, losing moments between hard-won inches. The tall square of light floating somewhere in the distance, almost, almost within arm’s reach, and it occurred to Will that the time had stilled, damning him in a world where Hannibal was both alive and not, existing as a perfect oxymoron somewhere just outside his reach.

And then Will’s fingers found the solidity of doorframe's wood, and clenching his teeth, he pulled himself back on unstable feet and looked.

Will felt his heart stopping, blood turning to ice. Because in front of his eyes was Hannibal. Laid on a gurney, naked under the harsh fluorescent lights but from layers of gauze and smudged bandages. The vivid red stains all but highlighting the green-grey palor of his skin.

And then the sunken chest rose and fell - barely half an inch - and Will spilled the rest of the way until there was no more distance between. Torn somewhere between horror and delight, Will’s fingers wrapped around one of Hannibal’s hands. The flesh was clammy and cold, but there was life, a fluttering heartbeat, faint but steady just underneath the skin.

Will, fighting to resist the dizziness, brought their faces closer together. The air they exhaled mingling. Breathing in, under the tinge of antiseptic and seawater and decay, what was purely Hannibal. And he called out to him, again and again, desperate to know that he was truly back with him, that he had not left him - alone.

Hannibal had grown incapable of denying Will - sometime between that rainy night in Baltimore and prison. Willing his eyes open through deep medicated haze, not quite focused but present. His lips curled upwards and breathed Will’s name in accent so thick, that was like a mouthful of warm honey warming Will’s frozen bones to their very marrow. His dark eyes blinked slowly, crinkled in a smile, and Hannibal was unconscious once more.

“If you manage to resist killing him for the next twelve hours, I will bring your stretcher next to his” a tight-lipped Chiyoh bargained from somewhere behind Will’s left shoulder. Had she been there the whole time? Will moved his head a fraction, a vague indication of agreement. Chiyoh pursed her lips a bit tighter. Still, she rolled Will’s stretcher by Hannibal’s, and half-pulled, half-dragged Will until he was lying flat on it, somehow without having loosened his grip on Hannibal’s hand.

Will’s brain was still brewing an explosion; his neurones flaring up in pain like the starry sky. Yet a chemical reaction was occurring, far brighter than the nerve-death of damaged flesh. The feeling of bliss that shook his being on the cliff was back; it had come back the moment he could touch Hannibal once more, skin on skin, and it had morphed into a steady glow. Will pressed closer to the only source of warmth he would ever need, wounds complaining. He nuzzled the soft skin at the crook of Hannibal’s neck and ever-so-slowly allowed the drugs to lull his senses.

Supernovae explode in an instance; but the clouds of radiation they leave behind can expand and glow for years after. And Will, mind drifting in a world of iridescent shapes and colours, decided that he didn’t mind staying behind for a while.

Later, Will wouldn’t be able to recall anything that had occurred during the first twenty-four hours after the fall. And even though he'd never know why, there was a feeling of bliss pulsing in his chest the next time he woke up, still naked but for the bandages, still heavily medicated, still snuggled peacefully against the man who had once gutted him. And the warmth in his chest stayed with him, pulsing and expanding each time he'd wake up surrounded, contained by Hannibal.

**Author's Note:**

> While written within the context of the NSFW prompt series, this story somehow turned out to be terribly SFW. I promise this will be the last not-sex driven part of the series! What can I say, I could never resist putting Will through some casual suffering...


End file.
